Last good version of Windows, RIP 🙏

Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV’s, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon’s, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.

Pretty much unfortunately. The good thing is its trivially easy to change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield or Google TV devices, plus you can even go a step forward and debloat them entirely with ADB. Amazon’s really the only manufacturer I’d say that forces home screen ads with no choice around it, since they actively prevent changing launchers and such. But Apple is probably the only one out of the box with no advertising.

If you have the money, I’d go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.

Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.

You can easily change launchers on the Shield and remove all of Google’s nonsense through ADB as well though, unlike Amazon who locks down the OS very tight. Plus like another commenter said, you can just flat out install LineageOS and you’re good.

Why not get the flatpak?

Security concerns. There’s a lot of debate over it, but from the research I’ve done, I believe the Flatpak of Firefox is less secure, since it seems to remove part of Firefox’s internal sandboxing, and relies heavily on Flatpak’s sandboxing.

Basically makes it easier to compromise your data within the browser (like cookies, site data, passwords, etc), but maybe harder to get to the rest of your OS.

I just prefer using the rpm of Firefox with Firejail, as that keeps Firefox’s built-in sandboxing intact, while adding an extra layer similar to Flatpak to restrict it further. Best of both worlds.

Its great and has a lot of potential, I like a lot of what it does. I just wish they had packaging easily available for Fedora/RHEL through a COPR or the like. Also would’ve preferred if they used a stable release vs. the ESR of Firefox as the base, but I can understand why.

with hardening out of the box

Floorp definitely isn’t hardened out of the box in my testing. Only thing it does is seems to disable Firefox’s telemetry, which is nice, but more hardening is certainly needed through other projects like Arkenfox (which work here on Floorp too). Also looks like Floorp makes it easier to toggle some privacy settings that you’d usually have to tweak the about:config for, and comes pre-installed with uBlock Origin, which is great.

I think overall my only concern with Floorp will be how well and quickly the developer can keep up with updates. The track record for now looks good, but only time will tell. Besides that, this is a good and very promising project, will definitely keep an eye on it.

What shell would you recommend? 🤔

Not sure I follow, there are plenty of Firefox-based browsers:

Tor, Mullvad, LibreWolf, Floorp, Pulse, Mull, Waterfox, Mercury, Ghostery, IceCat, Iceraven, etc.

Well said. May be worth reading through this GitHub issue and this Bugzilla issue as well. Its worth noting its also directly integrated into the browser as well in about:addons.

I’m personally not a fan of Firefox/Mozilla integrating and using Google Analytics, even under these circumstances, and think it does deserve criticism, but it is what it is I guess. I do hope they switch to a better alternative in the future.

In the meantime, setting the following about:config options should take care of and fully strip out Google Analytics and extension recommendations from about:addons:

“extensions.getAddons.showPane” to false

“extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled” to false

“browser.discovery.enabled” to false

“browser.discovery.sites” to be empty

I think you missed my point, I’m not applauding Apple for doing the bare minimum, and to be clear, I think you absolutely raise fair points, I’m just pointing out that its ridiculous to claim that Apple intentionally allows Pegasus to happen, which is absurd based off the fact they make efforts to patch its vulnerabilities whenever they pop up, add features like Lockdown Mode, and even warn people who could be impacted. Could they do better to be proactive against exploits? Sure, definitely seems like they have room for improvement, but that’s not the same thing as what the person I replied to had implied by acting like Apple intentionally allowed Pegasus to work and was complicit with it.

But, seriously… 3 (known) years later and Apple doesn’t have a fix for this?

Almost as if it’s intentionally unpatched

Pegasus constantly adapts, evolves, and changes overtime with how it works. Pegasus 3 years ago isn’t the same as Pegasus today. Once a vulnerability is discovered and fixed, they find a new one to exploit and take advantage of. Its a constant battle.

I’m not a big fan of Apple at all, but credit where its due, they have made a pretty good effort to patch Pegasus vulnerabilities whenever they come about, plus have added features like Lockdown Mode to help protect against it even further, etc. This article is literally about Apple even warning journalists to be cautious of it.

Saying Apple is intentionally allowing Pegasus to happen, like you’re claiming, is honestly laughable with all things considered.

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Yep, they’re horrible. I always disable internet on them, uninstall any apps I can, and generally do what I can to avoid using the built-in smart TV, but I shouldn’t have to do this, its unfortunate and sucks to deal with. They just take advantage of consumers who don’t know better, wish the TV market wasn’t like this. :/

This list has so many weird and obsolete recommendations, looks like its being refined and improved according to this, so until that’s finished, I’d take it with a heavy grain of salt.

Best way to fight against things like this is with your wallet. Stop buying and supporting games with Denuvo or any other similar DRM.

“default-release” is your default profile for the Stable release of Firefox.

“dev-edition-default” is the default profile for Firefox Developer Edition, so I’m assuming you had that installed at some point.

“default” to my understanding is only there for legacy reasons. It used to be the default Firefox profile way back in the day, but now that there’s so many different Firefox versions (Stable, Beta, Nightly, & Developer Edition), using the same default profile for all of them across editions would cause corruption and a lot of issues. So that’s why Mozilla moved to “default-release” for the default profile on Stable Firefox, similarly Developer Edition makes its own profile, “dev-edition-default”, as would Nightly, Beta, and so on. I’m not really sure why “default” is still included, its probably safe to delete, at the very least it can be safely ignored.

Basically, LMG were producing way too much content way too fast without proper testing of products and were making tons of mistakes, and wouldn’t take the proper measures to take accountability for or fix the mistakes they were making. An egregious example was a mouse they reviewed where they literally didn’t take the tape off the bottom of it. They also got a one of a kind prototype cooler from a very small start-up company, improperly tested it (used the wrong GPU that it wasn’t even made for), blasted the product and called it horrible because of it, then refused to properly retest it because it’d at most cost $500 (despite them being a $100 million dollar company), and to put the cherry on top, auctioned off the product despite the company explicitly requesting it back and LMG even agreeing to send it back.

Now LMG is also being accused of sexual harassment and being an overall extremely toxic and horrible work place by a former employee.

I’d strongly recommend just watching the Gamers Nexus video and reading the thread from the former employee because this reply doesn’t near do this shitshow justice and I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot details.

Gonna quote myself from an earlier comment I made:

On Windows, just use the built-in Windows Defender. On Linux, I recommend ClamAV + ClamTK. On Android, Hypatia.

If you think you have malware, this is a pretty good guide to remove it.

I’d also strongly recommend using and configuring a content blocker like uBlock Origin in your browser, as well as using a DNS level blocker like NextDNS.

If you have a multilayered setup like this, then I think you’re pretty good and it’ll be not impossible, but much harder to get malware or be infected. Just use common sense as always.

I generally avoid Cloudflare where possible personally because at the the end of the day, they’re a giant big tech company based in the US, with pretty much unprecedented control over the internet.

With that said, last time I looked into their privacy policy, I thought it was acceptable, but that’s been a while ago, so not entirely sure nowadays. Either way I’m not a huge fan.